Page 18 - Robert Rapier News Today

An old adage says that you should sell your stocks in May and wait until later in the year to re-enter the market. We discuss the wisdom of this advice.

Investing Daily Printable PDF I don’t look at the currency market for guidance on how stocks are likely to perform. Too often, futures trading in the dollar and other major currencies is based on macroeconomic trends that do not always correlate highly to how stock prices are likely to perform in the near term. But something unusual has occurred in the currency market over the past month that has caught my attention. Through the first three weeks of April, the price of gold rose 4% while ...

Investing Daily This week, Tesla (NSDQ: TSLA) released Fiscal 2021 Q1 results that exceeded Wall Street’s expectations. The electric vehicle (EV) manufacturer reported earnings per share (EPS) of 93 cents versus a consensus estimate of 79 cents. Also, total revenue of $10.39 billion easily exceeded the $9.92 billion estimate. The good news didn’t stop there. Telsa delivered 184,800 new cars during the quarter. That is more than double the number of new vehicle deliveries during the same pe...

Investing Daily Printable PDF In the words of Thomas Jefferson, third American president and avid hemp farmer: “Hemp is one of the greatest, most important substances of our nation.” Roughly two hundred years later, the United States is finally taking Mr. Jefferson at his word. The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) announced on April 27 that it’s partnering with a private chemical manufacturing company on a two-year project, a move that could vastly expand the market for hemp-infu...

Investing Daily Printable PDF You should invest in the most precious commodity on the planet. It isn’t oil, nor gold. I’m referring to water, the essence of life. A news story caught my eye that underscores the growing global demand for potable water. On April 23, California’s State Water Resources Control Board issued a draft Cease and Desist order against Nestlé (OTC: NSRGY), demanding that the international consumer food and beverage giant stop pumping millions of gallons of wate...

The bond market is still in the doldrums, but this week we urge investors who are approaching retirement to heed the lessons of past bear markets.

Investing Daily Printable PDF I was born in 1958, when “Ike” was in the Oval Office, Fidel Castro was fighting Batista in Cuba, Desi was fighting Lucy on TV, and Ed Sullivan’s cameramen were only allowed to film Elvis Presley from the waist up. Throughout most of my baby boomer existence, mainstream society viewed marijuana as “the devil’s weed.” For the counterculture of the 1960s, smoking pot was an illegal act of rebellion. And today? In many cities throughout America and Can...

Investing Daily Thirteen months ago, I named Netflix (NSDQ: NFLX) as a stock to own while “The Remote Economy Takes Off.” The overall stock market was plunging in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic. Most businesses either shut down or drastically reduced their operations. However, a small subset of companies saw their fortunes rise as consumers rapidly adapted to all forms of online commerce. On the day that article was published, NFLX closed near $336. Four months later, it peaked above...

Investing Daily Banks are back, baby. Bank earnings tend to establish the tone for the season and serve as a barometer of the overall economy. After salting away billions for possible loan losses in 2020, banks are expressing confidence in their ability to cope with defaults, a clear indication that stronger economic growth lies ahead in 2021. This past week, 15 of the 22 companies in the S&P 500 that reported actual earnings for the first quarter of 2021 were in the financials sector. Most of ...

Investing Daily Printable PDF A few weeks ago, I named infrastructure stocks “The Best Sector Bet This Year.” President Biden had just introduced a $2 trillion proposal that included a wide range of spending initiatives. Republicans have counter-proposed an $800 billion spending plan that is narrower in scope. It’s too soon to tell how those negotiations will turn out. However, it is probably safe to assume that some sort of spending bill will eventually be approved this year. In that...